valentine's at pineapple city

valentine's with pineapple city elder members,
originally uploaded by stephatriseup.

last week i met two sisters who have lived at banana city settlement, on the grounds of UKZN-Westville, since 1950, long before the university was planned for that area.

they call the area pineapple city, because there used to be a lot of pineapples grown in the community. somehow, nomalizo says, people began to refer to it as banana city, confusing it with another settlement nearby that could be seen thru banana tree groves.

in 1950, before forced separations of communities, the area was populated with a mix of african and indian families. now, this part is a hilly open space with room for farming. farther up toward the university is where the more densely populated part of the banana city settlement is (see previous post in jan about evictions).

i didn't take this photo-- sibu was pressing us about taking a nice valentine's photo. he was pretty obsessed with valentine's day all afternoon, and thought the flowers and red(-ish) pitcher made a nice touch.

i'm working on this new flickr thing, and thanks to raj's camera i've got a lot more photos from joe slovo. i've been working on a story out there with my friend esther about construction flaws in the new RDP (Reconstruction and Development Plan--ANC's original pre-1994, pre-neoliberal attempt at a just development plan) houses for shackdwellers. most are pretty new one-room houses, and most have pretty serious flaws, like roof tile leaks or cracks in the shower, or plumbing problems.

check out these young ones, who were following me and my camera around, standing with me in the bathroom with an overflowing toilet. luckily this time the water is relatively clean, and not sewage water, like the babies at foreman road play in outside their homes.

on the way back, while on the N2 expressway heading north from Chatsworth, this taxi whizzed by. [click for a close-up view.]
just missed getting a photo of "Violence is Nasty."
if i can get some other opportunities to take photos of taxis here i will, there are a gazillion cool designs, reminds me a lot of the brush painted Our Lady of Guadalupes on vans in Chicago. most pretty telling about the whole taxi culture here--Snoop and Dre are popular, there's a whole legion of "arab" and "thug" taxis, but also stuff like "Love Peace" and "Jewish Brothers", way too many "sexy lady" references, and all sorts of random pop culture. i need to start taking notes.

til soon.
steph